


Fleshling Child

by CodaAtTheEnd



Series: On The Origin of Egos [3]
Category: Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Fae & Fairies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-19
Updated: 2019-09-19
Packaged: 2020-10-21 14:04:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20694773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CodaAtTheEnd/pseuds/CodaAtTheEnd
Summary: Jameson Jackson is definitely 100% human. Honest.Formerly titled "Son of Man"





	Fleshling Child

**Author's Note:**

> I came up with this concept after I realized that Jameson Jackson's name meant son of James, son of Jack. Jack means "man" or "boy". What kind of person needs a reminder of their humanity in their own name? See "The Jacksepticeye Power Hour - Jameson Jackson".

The first lesson the villagers learn is this: The world is more than they pretend. The second lesson the villagers learn is this: There is a reason they pretend. The heartbeats/eons/years between the first and second lesson is when they are vulnerable. 

She is a dreamer, a girl that never looked at the world and thought, _this is enough_. Nothing is ever enough for her. The first lesson is one she learned when she was small enough to be devoured by the smallest of wolf pups, on a crisp cool evening when the trees called her name. The world, to her, is one of secrets to be discovered. She does not know—_cannot_ know—that the world is dangerous. She does not know the rule of blood, or the language of the wild. She does not know the twisting of thorns and the knife's edge of madness. She will, before the end. 

She left the village one warm summer morning to meet her lover, a young noble that could not wed her publicly because of his station in life. He loved her enough, however, that he would run away with her. The sun was high in the sky, but the forest blocked the light and warmth enough that the air was almost chilly. She walked toward their prearranged meeting space and saw him standing there, his eyes gleaming in the light. It was then she knew she would love no other, regardless of how their love progressed. Even if he left her, or she him, no mortal could ever compare. She loved him, and she could only hope he loved her back.

The scavengers gather, skulking in the trees. They know better than the foolish mortal. Her body will feed them, and her mind will feed _it_. She is prey, down to the marrow of her bones. She will fall eventually. They only need to wait. 

As she leaves the forest with her lover at her side, she does not hear, or perhaps simply ignores, the rattling of bones and the squelch of the bloodstained earth beneath her feet. The forest will eat her alive and leave her with nothing, because she is a fool and doesn't deserve anything she tried to get. Foolish Icarus. Falling with only the memory of the sun for comfort. Did he regret? Will she?

* * *

Her return to the village is as unceremonious as her departure. They glance, briefly, at the child with her, but that sort of thing is common enough, so they think nothing more of the matter. She reintegrates smoothly, and her boy fits seamlessly, as though he is a full-blooded villager instead of only half. They forget the "presents" left behind by the woman's man_<strike>(as if </strike>_<strike>those_ sorts of things were proper gifts)_</strike>. They forget the boy's _teeth_ and _claws_ and eyes like gemstones during those first few days. They forget how the woman was only gone for 3 months. 

It's almost strange, how easily he acclimates. How easily he slides into their lives and their hearts and their homes. How easily he escapes their notice. But he is a perfectly ordinary boy, and nothing is the matter at all.

* * *

Here are some statements about the boy's life: He didn't crawl outside as an infant, trying to reach _something_ he didn't understand. He didn't bite and _tear_ at his fellow children when he played, misunderstanding the game. He didn't meet a being that had _power_, that was everything he could have been if only his father hadn't left him to languish and wither among the _humans._ He didn't ask for his friends' names. He didn't get their names. He didn't use them. He didn't raze the town to the ground in a futile attempt to fill the void inside him. 

He doesn't feel at once _empty_, fundamentally deprived of something _essential_, and _crushed_ beneath the weight of his bones and his flesh and his blood and all the _human_ bits he doesn't _want_. He doesn't sometimes look at his hands and feel nauseous at the sight. He doesn't stare at the mirror and see a stranger looking back. He doesn't wish he wasn't one of _Them_. He doesn't wish he wasn't so _human_. He doesn't miss what he's never had. 

He is a perfectly ordinary boy living a perfectly ordinary life in a perfectly ordinary town at the edge of a perfectly ordinary forest. Some of these statements are true.

* * *

She thinks she can keep him from becoming what his father is. She thinks she can stop him from becoming what he is/was/will be by sprinkling salt across the doorway and slipping iron in his pockets. Even now, after losing the dream, she is still a fool.

She's not wrong, not really, but it's far too late for such simple charms to take hold. If she'd cast them earlier, when he was naught but idle fantasy, perhaps he would have been purely, perfectly ordinary. Perhaps he would have never come to be. Perhaps those outcomes would have been better, for her, for the village, for the world. Perhaps not. Only Seers will know, and they will never share. 

The nature of reality is not for mortals to know. The knowledge is like a cancer, a rot, turning what was into something horrific. Something _wrong_. No mere mortal could know Truth and come away unchanged. For the better, for the worse, but always irrevocably altered. The world is not a saccharine place, beneath the surface. It is beautiful and horrible and nightmarishly lovely, but sweet? But nice? But normal? Never. 

The salt stings, the iron burns, but the cancer remains. The problem was never the _boy_. No, the world is at fault for being what no one wanted it to be. The woman is at fault for thinking she could tame what was never meant to be tamed. The forest is at fault for not coming back for him. But not the boy. Never the boy. He never had a choice in this.

* * *

When he is young and wild, he wanders. Though his mother disapproves of his adventures, she can do little to stop him, and so he wanders. The forest does not harm him, the waters do not take him, the night does not wrap its shadowy tendrils into his soul. They would not dare. Test him? Of course. Taste him? A courtesy. But none would dare claim him for their own. They do not have the right.

In the forest, there is a monster/man/entity that smiles with too many teeth. It knows of his clumsy expeditions, but it does not approach him. If he wants to talk, it will know. The river's water brushes his skin, but it does not try to drag him under. He would be angry, and it does not wish to anger a child of the blood. The night has eyes and fangs and claws. It takes and takes but never gives. Yet it will not take this child, this pupa, this fleshling. It cannot wait to see what he becomes. These things are one thing. The form may change, but the forest is eternal.

* * *

"James," she said gently. "James, I need you to behave, okay?"

Her boy didn't look up from his journal. She wondered what he had written for a brief moment before turning back to the matter at hand. 

"James," she said, harsher, colder, crisper. "James, look at me."

At long last, he looked up, his eyes boring into her like a knife. He didn't speak. He didn't need to. His meaning was perfectly clear.

"I'm sorry to bother you, James, but you can't keep misbehaving at school. The headmaster can only let it slide so many times." She sighed as her boy looked back at his journal. "James, this is important."

He looked back up and frowned. "I know," he muttered with a vague sense of disappointment. "I'll try."

He wants to tell her that "James" isn't his name, but it fits better than any other name he's found, and she wouldn't understand. He'll look for more names, and when he's finally found one that feels like _him_ instead of something they want him to _be_, he'll tell her. The names in his book number in the hundreds, but none of them _fit_. They're all too tight or too large or stretched in strange places, and none of them are _his_. He wants a name that can be _his_.

* * *

If the forest had a face, it still be as emotionless as ever. Emotions are for people-things, not forests, not wild-things, not things with claws and fangs and eyes like voids. If it had a mouth that wasn't reserved for the river, it would be an empty thing, meant only for devouring whatever hapless thing it came across. If it had hands, they would cradle the fleshling regardless. He is something to be cherished, something not often found. 

If this is love, the forest can comprehend why humans go so mad over it. It might kill for this child. It might lie, it might cheat, it might steal. But the forest could never understand dying for love. If the life is gone, the love is gone. If the game ends, the joy ends. It could never die for anything, not even the strange sensation known as love. 

The child laughs, and it laughs with him, branches clattering in a non-existent wind. He understands what it understands, and that makes it so _happy_.

* * *

"You could have been great," the man-shaped thing with a face streaked with blue says as he lounges by the riverbank. "It's a pity your parent never finished you."

The boy is filled with a mournful regret for something he never was, something he has never known, something he will never be. He doesn't know what the man is talking about, but he understands the import of its words. He could have been something _more_, something _great_, and he won't be because someone never came back.

"You have the spark," the man continues. "You have just a _touch_ of the gift. Enough to make a mage out of you. But you would have been _glorious_."

The man leaps out of a tree and crouches in front of him, laying a hand on his face. He doesn't know how the man got from the riverbank to jumping out of a tree, but it doesn't surprise him somehow. It just seems so _normal_. 

"That's how we're made, you know." The man stretches like a cat and yawns, showing its pointy teeth. "We're born as mortals, just a fragment of the blood inside us. Then, slowly, we're replaced with ourselves. We become _better_."

He stares at it, watching it flicker between a man, a lion, a hawk, an otter. It keeps talking, but the words have stopped lining up neatly, one after the other like how human words do. They've gone from a line to something in more dimensions than he could possibly imagine, and most of the conversation is on a level he can't comprehend. He's _missing_ something, something important, and he can never have it. 

It hurts more now that he knows what he's missing.

* * *

There was something wrong with her child. She didn't know how she hadn't _noticed_, but there was something distinctly off about him. Something about his eyes, his hands, his teeth. Something about how his heart beat in his chest. Something about how he didn't breathe. Something about the way he smiled. Something about that boy was wrong.

He walked over the salt without trouble, he touched iron without being burned, he sat in the rowan chairs at the rowan table in the rowan house and felt nothing. He wasn't one of Them. She could take comfort in the fact that he wasn't one of Them. 

But then what _was_ he?

* * *

The village is his now. He knows their names, so he owns them. The village is the people, and the people are his, so the village is his. He could raze it to the ground, that much he knows. It is his right, as the name holder. He can do as he pleases, though it is considered tacky to destroy a perfectly useful tool. But he won't. That would take from the forest, and the forest is a dear friend.

His flesh-mother fears him now. She has realized the truth. It is to be expected. She named him, after all. And if the name doesn't fit well, that is through no fault of her own. She did not know what she had brought into the world. She cannot be blamed for him, and he cannot be blamed for her. He might let her live, he might not. She doesn't matter anymore. She only mattered because of _him_.

He's found a good name now, one that fits his skin like the skin itself. He's pieced it together from scraps, the well-fitting bits of names coming together to make the perfect one. Jameson Jackson. A remnant of who he was, a remnant of who she wanted him to be, a reminder that he was mortal once. He was born of mortals and raised by mortals. He was called James, once. 

Words do not fit in his mouth anymore. They've never fit well, but now that he is himself, they've abandoned him, or maybe he's abandoned them. Hands flashing like birds speak for him now, elegance incarnate. And if an ignorant mortal does not know the language of the swooping eagles, he has helpful slides that appear in their native tongue, just for them. 

He lives, he learns, he loves, but most of all, he smiles. 

* * *

In a place that is all places, a man in red stands by a man with a face streaked with blue and watches the child burn a path through history. Their game is a long one, but all plans come to fruition eventually. They smile faintly at the line he has traced/will trace/is tracing through history. The thing that was a boy but is not anymore smiles back.

* * *

In a house at the edge of imagination in the year 2018, a magician and a monster sit side by side. 

"Never trust the Fae," Marvin the Magnificent whispers softly, mournfully, brokenly. "They always give you what you ask for. Exactly what you ask for."

Jameson Jackson smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic underwent a massive rehaul on the 20th of April 2020. I hope you still enjoy it.


End file.
